


Indemnity

by epithetta



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-04
Updated: 2013-01-04
Packaged: 2017-11-23 14:07:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/623021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epithetta/pseuds/epithetta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack checked his watch. "Late," he said, staring down the platform.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Indemnity

**Author's Note:**

> Written utilising the writerinadrawer prompt 4.10— "Trains, Planes and Automobiles" (Someone/s is stuck in transit. Other transportation devices [i.e., boats, spaceships] are okay.). Added Element: a historical figure.

Jack checked his watch. "Late," he said, staring down the tracks.

Ianto ruffled his newspaper and glanced up at the board that ran garbled messages. "Hrm. Are you on the right platform?"

Jack shrugged. "Don’t they all go to the same place?"

Ianto closed the paper. "Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry? Rome?" He smiled ruefully. "I don't know if roads and train tracks are the same thing." He shrugged and checked his pocketwatch. "Then again, there's that old saying, 'When you don't know where you're going'…"

"'Every road will take you there,'" Jack murmured. There was the sound of a whistle and a far off mechanical noise. Jack stood. "That'll be us."

Ianto refolded the paper and set it on the bench, still sitting. "That'll be you." He picked up a styro container from the bench next to him and sipped. "Ugh. Tea."

The train noise increased, but Jack couldn't see the carriages. Or the engine. He shoved his hands in his pockets and felt for their tickets. "Do you have the tickets?"

Ianto sipped from his cup again, pinky reflexively out. He frowned at his errant finger. "It's as if the cup makes you do that ergonomically," he mumbled, then looked up at Jack. "You do."

"I don't have—"

Jack sat up with a swift intake of air that made his lungs feel as if they were on fire. The station alarms were still going off and he could hear the screaming in the distance. He rolled to the side, the pounding already starting in his temples as he checked the pulse of the person next to him: dead, eyes staring off into space, out the transparent aluminum viewport at the flaming ball of gas that was the giant sun of Con~fuc~ius~4. The evacuation transport he was on twisted and groaned with the strafing damage, and it was only a matter of time before they were boarded and picked clean for parts. 

With any luck they'd pump the place full of air to get around and not trust vacsuits. If he could get oxygen, then he could stay alive long enough to get on their ship and—

Jack checked his watch. "Late," he said, staring down the platform.

Ianto ruffled his newspaper and glanced up at the board that ran garbled messages: _YARDSTFFNDN: 34:79…FLLANNWYYS: 29:40…DULUTH: 09:49…_ "I'm beginning to think this is a fake train," he said cheerfully. "Are we on a game show?"

Jack blinked. His throat hurt, in an achey way. "I don't think so." He grabbed at his throat. 

Ianto handed him a small tube. "Lozenge? Dying is harsh on the airways."

Jack took the small tube and unpeeled the end, picking out the first gray disk. It tasted faintly of chemicals and anise. He hadn't tasted anise since the last time he'd been on Earth; it made him think of Martha. The burning in the back of his throat eased and he leant back against the bench. 

"Better?" Ianto took the lozenges and prised one out, popping it in his mouth. "I eat these like they're candy."

There was a sound, like a train coming in, but far away. Jack closed his eyes for a moment, then cracked the one closest to Ianto open and watched him. If a tree fell in a forest and no one was there, would Ianto disappear?

"Why are you here?" he asked suddenly.

Ianto blinked. "Train. And to tell you--"

Jack sat up with a swift intake of air that made his lungs feel as if they were on fire. The station alarms were still going off and he wasn't any closer to an oxygen mask. But a Breek was standing in the doorway, and when he raised a hand to it, the lizard's scales rippled as it turned its head and barked something down the hallway behind it. 

He blacked out when the creature slung him over its shoulder; the alarms sounded less like the shrill trilling of the electronic sensors and more like the squealing of metal brakes on a railroad track.

***

"It's too hot to drink, and by the time it's cool enough, the train will be here," Jack griped when Ianto offered him the coffee in the styro cup. 

Ianto set the second coffee on the bench. "It's almost like hell, isn't it?"

Jack rolled his eyes. "This isn't hell."

Ianto sipped from his coffee, its nuclear heat not bothering him in the least. "How do you know?"

"I wasn't raised with the concept of hell. Didn't even know about it until I was twenty-three."

Ianto saluted him with his coffee. "So?"

"Look, I just know, okay?"

"You never asked what I'm doing here."

Jack opened his mouth, closed it, and watched the milling shadows on the opposite platform. People waiting for the train, but what train? And who were they? They were dark grey and black shapes, charcoal humanoids. That side of the station made no sound, or if its inhabitants did, it was filtered out to his ears. 

"There is no here," he said finally. "This is all in my brain. My dying brain."

Ianto snapped his fingers. "Whatever you say. But--"

Jack sat up with a swift intake of air and felt the last of the heat recede as the lava burns seared the nerves in his legs. He hadn't intended on falling this far, but the chains hadn't held when he'd got close enough to fish the fuel rods they needed from the edge of the volcano. The winch would pull him back up, but it was slow, manned by droids. 

_Oh god,_ he thought as he watched his feet trying to reform. _Sonofabitch--_

"No really, this is all in my head," he said as he leant back against the bench. "Something I've cooked up instead of the darkness I used to see." He shrugged. 

"I would have thought that if you were going to 'cook up' anything," Ianto mused, "we'd be more naked."

Jack snorted. "Give me time."

"You didn't used to need time."

"Maybe I've got old."

Ianto laughed into his coffee. "Maybe you have, at that."

Jack sat up with a swift intake of air and wondered how many times it would take him to describe the concept of breathing magma to Ianto.

***

The last thing Jack saw was the shell coming for his bunker, and he had three seconds to react, so instead of diving for shelter, he thought about how thousands of years could go by, and humans could spread out all over the universe like honey sliding on a flat surface, and still, they loved those bomb shells.

And then he was next to Ianto, something else that was as predictible as the burn of a phosphorus grenade on the skin. The coffee cup next to him was still too hot, and he burned his tongue when he picked the styro up and sipped from it. 

Ianto sighed. "One of these days you'll learn that your life is just as valuable as the next person's," he said. "You just have more of it."

Jack turned his head and watched the other man's face, the blue eyes sparking with smugness. "You know, I don't think we've ever covered this topic," he said. 

"Do you ever feel guilty that I'm here?" Ianto asked suddenly. 

Jack thought about it. Across the tracks on the opposite platform, the shadow beings were listless, almost unmoving, as if they had given up ever getting anywhere on time. If there was an 'on time' for them. 

"I don't know," he said finally. "It's not as if this is real, so I made you up." He blinked, one hand reaching out to smoothe Ianto's collar, to brush the wisps of hair at the nape of his neck. "I must feel guilty about something if I keep imagining you here."

There was a distant whistle, and Jack knew time was of the essence. It was probably synapses in his head or something, letting him know revival was imminent. 

"I think," Ianto said then, "you know I'm not in your head."

Jack snorted and watched the shadow people start to move a bit, as if the whistle was exciting. "There's no way to know that."

"True," Ianto capitulated, and then picked up a small carry-case, pulling the shoulder strap over his head. "Regardless, I'm out of here," he said.

"What?" Jack stood when Ianto did, glancing about. The train sounded and finally, from the direction behind Ianto, Jack could see the engine of the train. The rolling board read: _YWFFANWYYN 8:93._

Ianto turned to look behind him at the arriving train and carriages, a small smile playing on his lips. "Train doesn't come this way very often," he said, straightening his tie, "but the detour was worth it."

The figures on the opposite side of the tracks scurried about, slippery shadows bouncing as the engine pulled up and obscured them from view. 

Ianto smiled. "They get excited every time, but it's never going in the right direction," he offered to Jack and made as if to queue even though they were the only people there. The train came to a halt and Ianto waved to someone inside. "Nice to have company," he murmured.

"But you--" Jack stopped when the doors opened and Ianto stepped up into the carriage, turning at the sound of Jack's voice. His throat felt hot and tight, and his heart pounded in his chest in a way that was unfamiliar for this place. Ianto fished something out of his pocket, a beige and orange ticket, glanced at it, and then tucked it safely back into his waistcoat. 

Jack swallowed. "You can't go now."

"Hey," Ianto said, reaching out to lay a hand on Jack's cheek. "Hey."

"You just...you just got here."

Ianto smeared something across Jack's cheek with his thumb, and Jack realised that he was crying. "No I didn't. It's been a while."

The alarms bells rang and Ianto pulled away, ascending one more step. Jack tried to step onto the train, but his foot went through it as if it wasn't even there. He reached for the door and his hand went through the glass. "Wait--"

Ianto smiled. "I'll see you again." He waved a hand back and forth. "Timey-wimey, you know."

"I loved you," Jack said quickly, afraid the doors were going to close before he could force it out. Through the windows on the other side of the train he could see the shadow figures banging on the outside of the carriage. 

The doors started to close, hit Ianto's arm and opened again. _Something is obstructing the door. Please move further in to the car and remove all baggage from the aisle._

"I know, Jack, I know," he said, leaning out and brushing his lips against Jack's mouth, too faint already, non-corporeal, like a phantom train. "And you know, when I told you that--" 

Jack sat up with a swift intake of air, paused, and glanced wildly about. There. He yanked a plasma rifle from a dead soldier's hands and swung it about, mouthed the muzzle and pulled the trigger.

The platform was empty. Jack stood, hands in pockets, and watched the shadow people mill about on the other side, reading shadow newspapers and checking shadow timetables. His own side was completely devoid of life. Ianto was gone. The board was blank.

He kicked at nothing and turned, sitting down on the bench, its green paint a mix of shiny and worn from decades of bodies sliding along it. He pulled his hands from his pockets and rubbed them on his thighs, breathing deep the smell of cement and fuel and coffee. Coffee.

The cup sat to his left on the bench and Jack reached out for it. He stared across the empty tracks where the shadow beings waited, watching back.

He peeled the lid off and lifted the cup to his face. 

It was still warm.

END


End file.
